


the dante & blays guide to pet adoption

by Kirta



Category: The Cycle of Arawn/The Cycle of Galand - Edward W Robertson
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, also some fighting bc it's dante and blays, there's a cat!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 11:23:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20257309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kirta/pseuds/Kirta
Summary: Three years before the Chainbreakers' War, Dante and Blays find themselves in the middle of the woods deep in Gaskan lands. They also find a cat- or rather, a cat finds them. Repeatedly.





	the dante & blays guide to pet adoption

**Author's Note:**

> hey! i wrote this almost a year ago, which is fun.

The cat started following them in a little town called Kevren, a three day hike from Dollendun into the Gaskan heartland. It couldn’t have been more than six months old; its fur was a gray so dark it was nearly black and it wasn’t quite the height of the boot whose dangling laces it had been stalking for a block and a half. Blays glanced back down the street just as the cat poked its head around an empty barrel.

“You seem to have picked up an extra shadow.”

Dante looked back too. The cat- kitten, really- crouched and wiggled its butt, yellow eyes fixed on Dante’s untied bootlaces. Dante stopped walking and turned. Balancing on one foot, he jerked the other side to side until the kitten burst forward and leapt for the laces. It landed solidly on top of Dante’s foot and dug in with tiny claws as it bit at the lace. Blays crouched down and poked it gently in the head, jerking his finger back when it swiped for him.

“I think it likes you,” Dante said, barely keeping his balance.

“Doesn’t everyone?” The kitten sniffed suspiciously at Blays’s finger. “Are we gonna keep it?”

Dante laughed. “With what we do for a living?”

Blays grinned and detached the kitten from Dante’s boot. “Yeah, we’re usually not in the most in cat-friendly environments.” He set the kitten on the packed dirt that made up the town’s streets and patted its head. “See you later, fuzzball.”

\----

“I wonder who that cat belonged to.” Blays said that evening. He stirred the stew the innkeeper had brought them idly. “It was cute.”

Dante took a bite of his stew and nearly scalded his entire mouth. “It was tiny, even for a kitten. It was probably a stray.”

“Do you ever think about getting a cat or something? As a pet, not as one of your undead puppets.”

Dante shrugged. “When I was a kid, sometimes. But now? We’ve barely spent three months in any one place since Cally sent us down here.”

“Yeah, but what about later? When we get back to Narashtovik?”

“Can you imagine a cat running around the Citadel? Sending elderly Council members and nervous monks crashing down the stairs all day?”

Blays laughed. “You know, that just makes it seem like an even better idea.”

Dante shook his head. “The city would be in ruins in a month.”

“I’m still not hearing a good reason to not get a cat when we get back.”

“If you’re so set on the idea, get one of your own. That way, you get to be in charge of feeding it.”

“Nah, I think I’ll just let it get into your food,” Blays said, fighting a grin and watching something on the table. Dante turned back to his bowl only to find it had been repossessed, and was now the property of a small bundle of dark gray fur. He pulled the bowl away, earning an indignant squeak.

“That’s mine, you little asshole.” The kitten turned baleful yellow eyes on Dante and walked back to the bowl. “Hey!” Dante jerked it away again. “What are you even doing here? Have you been following us all day?” The kitten ignored him and chased the bowl again. Dante rolled his eyes and let it have its prize. Across the table, Blays was busy laughing at the scene, so Dante reached over and stole his bowl.

“Hey!”

“You wanted a cat, didn’t you? There’s a cat.” Dante took a bite of Blays’s stew.

“Clearly, it likes you better.” Blays took his bowl back. “You should keep it.”

“I’m not keeping the cat.”

“No? It looks like it’s keeping you.” 

Dante looked down. The kitten, apparently having decided the stew wasn’t nearly as exciting without someone trying to keep it away, had wandered over and curled up on the table in front of him. Dante eyed Blays, who looked far too smug about the whole situation. “I’m not keeping the cat.”

\----

The cat did not care whether or not Dante intended to keep it. They’d left it fast asleep on the common room table the night before and had left the inn through a window before dawn as the rooms around them filled with Gaskan soldiers. Despite their exit and the sudden influx of more than thirty new humans, two days later it wandered into their camp as dusk fell, hidden in a thicket six miles from town. Dante nearly dropped the wrist-thick branch he’d been feeding to the fire when he caught sight of it.

“Lyle’s balls, you’re a stubborn cat,” he muttered. The cat meowed at him. Acting on a sudden suspicion, he picked open a recent scab on his arm and called the nether. He could find no sorcerous tether to imply the kitten was anything more than persistent. He did find a thorn stuck in one of its paws, and healed it almost before he’d thought about it. The kitten shook its paw and glared suspiciously at Dante. “You’re welcome.”

Dead leaves crunched behind him. “Thanks? Though I’m not really sure what I’m thanking you for, seeing as I’m the one who found dinner.” Blays pushed his way through a bush and into the ring of faint firelight. He saw the kitten and stopped. “Oh, you again.” He looked at Dante. “Are you sure someone else isn’t in charge of it? Or is it just determined?”

“It’s one completely normal, fully alive cat.”

“Wait, did you actually check?”

“Yes.”

Blays shook his head and sat, handing Dante a skewered fish. “Maybe it’s a sign from the gods. You’ve been commanded by the heavens to adopt a cat.”

Dante picked up a pebble and tossed it at Blays. “Clearly. Because the gods have nothing better to be doing than arranging- will you quit that?” The kitten looked back at Dante from the ground. As he watched, it braced itself on his knee while it stretched as tall as it could make itself and took a bite of his fish. Dante jerked the rest of it up out of the kitten’s reach and swatted its head. It hissed at him. “You’re the one who’s stealing my food. Go bother Blays or something.” The kitten dug its claws into Dante’s leg and reached for the fish again, so he scooped it up and pushed it towards Blays, who tore a chunk out of his own fish and dropped it for the kitten.

“So what do you want to do about the convoy tomorrow?”

Dante sighed through his nose. “We’ll have the two of us and a half-grown cat against upwards of fifty redshirts when it gets here. How does running the other way sound?” The kitten, apparently pleased with Blays’s offering, curled up on the ground beside him, watching Dante, tail twitching.

“I’d say that sounds like the most reasonable option, which of course rules it right out. Besides, your count is off. Once we get the norren out, they’ll only outnumber us two to one, instead of twenty-five to one.”

“Assuming they’re all healthy enough and willing to fight, and that they’re not all immediately skewered, weaponless, by the very much weaponed soldiers.”

“Now that’s just pessimistic. We’ve seen norren fight before. Even unarmed, they’re worth at least two of Moddegan’s soldiers.”

“Well then how do you suggest we get them out without alerting the guards?”

Blays’s eyes fell on the kitten, who had since fallen asleep. “Can you make the cat grow ten feet tall and set it on the convoy?”

“No.”

“Can you break all of the norren’s chains at once?”

“No.”

“Can you conjure up swords for all of them once we do get them out?”

“No.”

“Can you summon an army of kittens whose only desire is to steal people’s food?”

“N- why would I do that even if I could?”

Blays shrugged. “It would make a neat party trick if nothing else.” He reached down to pet the kitten. “We could always try an ambush.”

“Before the convoy makes Kevren? It would work if we knew which direction they were coming from. But we don’t. Thus our whole trip days into Gaskan territory in the first place. I could put out scouts, but it would be dumb luck stumbling across them in this much forest.”

Blays leaned back and huffed a breath. “So no ambush. About that cat army…”

“The one I can’t summon?”

“Yeah, that one. Can you make it _look_ like you can summon them?”

Dante pulled his fish back from the fire where it had been cooking and inspected it. “An illusion? Maybe. How big of a cat army were you thinking?”

“How many can you fit in the trees around the inn?”

Dante snorted. “Are we trying to make those inside stay inside out of fear of our mighty feline army or come outside and start poking at them?”

“Honestly I’d take either.”

“And what will you be doing while I distract the redshirts with threatening cat-visions?”

“Oh, I figured I’d go free the norren they won’t be guarding, since you’ll be distracting them so well.”

Dante eyed Blays. “You think you can get them all out in time? I won’t be able to hold an illusion that size for long.”

Blays shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out.”

Dante shook his head. “Are we actually doing this? Installing a cat army in the trees?”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“No, I suppose not.”

Blays grinned across the fire. “I guess you’d better start practicing your cats then.” Dante laughed and took a bite of his fish.

\----

Dante woke the next morning to a warm weight settled on his chest. He cracked an eye open. Two bright yellow cat eyes stared back at him. Dante sighed. The kitten seemed to take this as a sign that it was time to get up. It yawned and stretched its legs, tiny claws flexing uncomfortably close to Dante’s eyes. He grabbed it and held it up above his head.

“As long as you’re going to hang around, you’re going to be useful.” It meowed indignantly and squirmed in his grasp.

An hour later, the kitten was crouched, tail lashing, growling in a very high-pitched kitten-voice at a copy of itself sitting three feet away. The copy got to its feet and arched its back but made no sound. The kitten inched forward and swatted at it. When its paw passed straight through the other cat, it jumped back and hissed, tail fluffing to twice its normal size. Dante laughed and let the illusion vanish. The kitten jumped again. Dante reached out to smooth its ruffled fur.

Blays rolled over in his blankets and yawned. “So have you named it yet?”

“Her.”

“You named the cat Her.”

“No, the cat’s a her.”

“Oh. That doesn’t answer my question.”

“No.” Dante fished in his pack for a bit of dried meat and held it out to the kitten, who sniffed it distrustfully. She reached a hesitant paw forward. When it didn’t pass through, she snatched it up and looked hopefully back at Dante. He held out another piece for her inspection. When she seemed satisfied that this one too was real, he tossed it across the cold firepit and into Blays’s blankets. The kitten bounded eagerly through the ashes and jumped after the scrap of meat. Blays’s muffled curses filled the trees.

“Suriyana,” Dante called over. The kitten’s head appeared out of the Blays-and-blanket pile. Dante held up another piece of food.

“What?” Blays struggled upright as the kitten dashed back across camp.

“She’s from the _Cycle._ She-”

“Yeah, I figured as much. But that’s way too much to say every time you want her attention. I’m gonna call her Suri.”

Dante fed the kitten another scrap of meat. He pointed over at Blays. “Suriyana, get Blays.” She tipped her head to the side, as if to say _why would I do that?_ or, more likely, _do you have any more food?_ but remained in front of Dante.

“She’s not a dog. Cat’s don’t like being told what to do.” Blays brushed ashy cat prints from his shirt. “Hey, Suri, why don’t you check Dante’s bag for more- hey, no, not my bag.” Dante laughed while Blays chased Suri away from his own pack.

“The convoy should reach Kevren in two days. We should move closer to town before they get here.”

Blays shooed Suri away from his bag again. “Still plenty of time to pick that reasonable option.”

“Where’s the fun in that, though?” Dante conjured two copies of Suriyana and sent them prowling towards Blays’s bag. The real one circled to the far side of the bag. Blays eyed the three cats closing in on him.

“And here I thought you were on the side of cats _not_ stealing our food.”

“No, just my food. Yours is fair game.” Dante made one of the copies pounce. Suri and the other followed right on its heels. Blays’s eyes narrowed. He turned and snatched the real cat out of the air. Suri yowled. Blays set her down and she retreated to the edge of camp, tail lashing the dust. Blays turned a smug grin on Dante.

He let the illusions vanish. “How’d you tell?”

“They weren’t breathing. A bit of a giveaway, if only one of them seems to need air.”

“It’ll be too dark for the soldiers to notice, though.”

“I sure hope so.”

A few minutes later, Blays wandered out of camp and stayed away until noon. Dante worked on his illusory cats, playing with size, coloring, and expression, using Suriyana as a base. By the time Blays strolled back through the bushes, Dante thought he had a plan.

“How goes the cat army?”

“My furry minions keep trying to steal whatever food you have stashed in your bag. You know how it is.” Dante spread his hands and called the nether, shaping it into an approximation of the inn, which sat on the very edge of Kevren surrounded by tall trees with grasping, low-hanging branches. He shrouded the image with nighttime darkness and filled the branches with vaguely cat-shaped shadows, each marked by a pair of yellow eyes that seemed to glow. Blays examined the display.

“Menacing. I like it. Do you think it will hold up?”

“It should, but when do things ever go the way they should?”

“Fair point.”

They spent the rest of the day around their camp, playing with Suriyana and generally relaxing before what was bound to be the latest in a series of unnecessarily dramatic escapades.

Despite initial success, it seemed Suriyana didn’t care much for Blays’s nickname, and would only respond to him when he used her full name or whistled for her, a three note sequence that Dante couldn’t seem to replicate. Fortunately for Dante, Suriyana seemed determined to follow him most places anyway. That night found the kitten curled into a warm, gently vibrating ball on Dante’s chest again. He sighed softly and scratched her ears. The vibrating intensified.

“You seem to have forgotten about not keeping her pretty quickly.” Blays’s voice drifted across their camp. Dante rolled his eyes in the darkness.

“I hope she leaves something smelly in your boot while you sleep.”

\----

Suriyana didn’t leave anything fragrant or otherwise in Blays’s footwear overnight, and when they woke in the morning she was nowhere to be found. Dante tried calling for her but got no response. He pushed down a pang of something suspiciously like loss and went about his business. She reappeared at midmorning, dragging a massive maple leaf behind her and depositing it proudly on the ground between Dante and Blays as they packed camp. Blays laughed and petted her. Dante glanced around. She must have ranged far to find the leaf; the forest immediately surrounding them boasted a mix of many trees, but they were all decidedly nonmaple in nature.

“You ready?” Blays asked, standing.

Dante shrugged his pack onto his shoulders. “Ready as I ever am for these things. Let’s go.”

They headed into the woods, Suriyana trailing after them. From time to time she would break off to chase something of great interest among the trees, but she always found them again. Halfway back to town, a sudden extra weight pulled at the straps on Dante’s pack. He craned his neck around and found Suriyana perched on top of it, staring at Dante as if to ask _what are you looking at? this is perfectly normal._ Dante turned back to the woodcutter’s track they were following. An hour later they cut away from the track and settled down just out of sight of Kevren. Dante poked around the nearby bushes and found the corpse of a recently deceased squirrel, which he raised and sent bounding along tree branches until it found itself a good view of Kevren’s inn. Dante and Blays settled in to wait for the Gaskan convoy and its norren cargo.

The convoy finally arrived in the late afternoon. Dante watched through the squirrel as the norren were herded at swordpoint into a clump tucked up against the wall of the inn, facing the forest. Most of their escort, soldiers in Gaskan red, headed en masse into the inn while a few unlucky souls remained behind to guard the norren. Dante returned to his own vision.

“The convoy’s here,” he said quietly. Blays stirred from where he’d been sitting against a tree nearby.

“How’s it look?”

“About what we were expecting. Tired soldiers, tired-er norren slaves. Most of the soldiers went into the inn but a few are standing guard.”

Blays got a thoughtful look on his face. “What if we went now?”

Dante shook his head. “Even if we managed to get the norren out and away without alerting the soldiers inside, we’d be too easy to track in broad daylight.”

“Ah. Wait ‘til night it is, then.” Blays whistled softly for Suriyana, who came bounding up to rub her head against his hand.

Nothing happened for the rest of the afternoon. Dante checked on the inn every half hour, but the only change was in who was standing guard. As dusk fell, Dante and Blays crept closer to Kevren. The inn rose before them, three stories of weather-beaten wood sitting ten yards from the nearest trees. Orange light and soldiers’ laughter spilled from the front door and between cracks in the wood. Half a dozen men ringed the norren prisoners, casting longing glances back towards the inn. The sun had fallen below the trees, leaving the sky pink at the edges and fading to the purple of old bruises. Dante and Blays stopped at the edge of the treeline.

Blays took a breath. “Here we go.”

Dante nodded. “Good luck.”

“You too.” Blays peeled off and vanished between the trees, angling towards the far edge of the Gaskan perimeter.

Dante drew his knife and opened his forearm. The nether jumped to his hands. Suriyana crouched at his feet. The forest darkened. Dante pulled the nether into clouds of shadow along the low-hanging branches of the nearest tree. He formed it into vague cat-shapes and then started on the eyes, adding glowing yellow circles in pairs, as if each cat was opening its eyes to watch the soldiers.

For ten minutes, not a single one of them noticed. A bead of sweat rolled down Dante’s face. Was it too much to ask that the soldiers notice the literal glowing coming from the tree right in front of them? Dante reached out with the nether and conjured an illusion of a leaf, limned faintly in yellow light, and had it drift to the ground in front of the nearest of the guards. The man looked down, then back up. Then back down. Dante muttered. The not-leaf jerked upwards in a streak of light that vanished into the trees. _That_ managed to get the man to look up and see the cats. He leaped backwards with a startled oath that drew the attention of the other guards. Dante expanded the illusion, opening yellow eyes in the trees to either side. Four of the soldiers drifted together, including the one that should have been guarding the farthest point of their arc. A shadow slipped from the forest towards the norren, who by now seemed as interested in the eyes as the humans. Dante made the eyes blink, one pair after another, jumping up and down the line. On a whim, he made some of them change colors after blinking. Soon, half the eyes spilled light as red as the Gaskan uniforms.

Dante could feel the strain of the illusion building. It was mostly static, which helped, but it was still fairly complex and covered a good amount of space. He gritted his teeth and added more cats near the foot of the first tree, behind which he was currently hiding. These ones got eyes white as ether. Dante risked a glance around the tree. One soldier hung back, keeping plenty of space between himself and the trees. The four others had clustered near Dante’s tree and seemed to be working up the nerve to approach the glowing-eyed cats. The sixth was nowhere to be seen. 

Suriyana meowed behind him. Dante ducked back around the tree and found himself face-to-face with a very human, very real pair of eyes. _Shit._ He dropped the illusion, whipping the nether into a blade that he slammed through the sixth soldier’s face. He prayed the others’ shouts of surprise as the eyes vanished all at once covered the sound of the falling body. Breath coming too quickly as his heart thundered, Dante peeked around the trunk of the tree again. The soldiers were still looking towards the trees, but that wouldn’t last. Blays needed more time. He’d gotten handy with a lockpick, but he was still only human. Dante turned back to the body. Something glinted silver. He crouched down and pulled out a heavy iron key dangling on a chain. Dante stared at it.

“Suriyana!” he hissed. The kitten clambered up on top of the man’s chest and cocked her head at him. He looped the chain three times around her neck and tucked the key into the loops. She immediately tried to shake it off. “Suriyana, go find Blays.” She stared at him. Dante waved frantically towards the norren. Suriyana didn’t move. Dante took a deep breath and summoned the nether. Angling around the tree, he searched for Blays’s distinctly human form among the norren. Nothing. He had to try anyway. Dante shaped the nether into an image of Suriyana and the key and set it in what he hoped was the middle of the norren clump. He held it for as long as he dared before letting it fall. He checked on the soldiers. They were edging backwards, towards the norren, though they were still facing Dante.

Suriyana’s ears stood straight. She jumped up and whirled to face the inn. Dante heard nothing, but she leapt from the body and raced for the norren. At least one of the soldiers turned at the motion, and that was too many. If any of them noticed Blays among the norren and raised the alarm, it was over.

Dante picked up a rock and threw it into the undergrowth to his left. The soldiers whipped around at the noise. Dante pulled the nether into the shadow of a person. The soldiers started towards it. He dropped it. The four more daring stopped and drew their swords. They advanced into the trees. Dante held his breath as they passed just a few feet from his tree. Moving as silently as he was able, Dante rounded the trunk. The last soldier still hung back, one hand hovering near the hilt of his sword. Dante could hear the others pushing through bushes behind him. Someone was getting uncomfortably close. Dante called the nether and urged it towards the fifth Gaskan. The man collapsed into an unconscious heap. Dante stood.

“Hey!” The nearest soldier was right behind him. Dante flung out a hand. The man collapsed with a gaping hole in his chest. Dante cursed. He glanced over his shoulder. The number of norren huddled at the foot of the inn seemed to have dwindled, but it wasn’t enough. Dante drew his own sword and sprinted into the trees, away from the inn, not bothering to quiet his steps at all. Shouts followed him. Three minutes later he slowed, listening for heavy feet pounding behind him. Nothing. He pulled out his torchstone and blew on it. White light filled the trees around him, casting their trunks into sharp relief. He hadn’t actually managed to outdistance them, had he?

The light of the torchstone glanced off metal. Dante flung up his sword in a clumsy block. Steel rang on steel. Dante backed away from the soldier. He threw himself into another hurried parry. It was a shame he couldn’t just blast all of the soldiers into bits with the nether. Well, strictly speaking, he was fully capable of doing just that (and already had that night, though that couldn’t be helped now), but in practicality, it was messy, and a pretty obvious sign that a sorcerer had been there. That was something that ran almost directly counter to keeping Narashtovik’s involvement in the Territories quiet. Dante blocked again, the contact jarring his arm, and backed further into the trees. He tripped on a root and fell solidly on his ass. A much sharper pain cut into his suddenly airborne leg. Something warm and wet sprinkled his face. Dante lashed out with the nether, locking the soldier in place. Dante rolled away from the man’s sword, frozen less than a foot from Dante’s chest. He pulled himself to his feet and stabbed the soldier.

“Brosk!” The last two soldiers had arrived. Dante turned to face them. They spread out to either side, circling Dante until he couldn’t watch both at once. His leg throbbed. The soldier to the left moved. Dante lunged forward and twisted, lashing blindly upwards with the nether. Branches crashed to the ground. One of the soldiers swore. The other was busy fighting his way free of fallen tree bits. Dante swung for the man’s middle and connected solidly. Unfortunately, this gave the last one the perfect opportunity to cross the fallen limbs and stab at Dante’s gut. Dante screamed and punched outward with the nether. The soldier flew backwards and cracked into a tree. He fell to the ground bonelessly, whimpering.

Dante stumbled backwards. The soldier had kept ahold of his sword as he’d gone flying, which had had the rather dramatic effect of doubling the size of the hole in Dante’s stomach. The hole from which blood was now pouring at a frankly alarming rate. Dante backed into a tree trunk and slid to the ground. His torchstone showed him the wound with terrible clarity. Something inside it twitched with the beat of his heart, which seemed much too fast to be at all healthy. Dante lifted a hand to poke at the twitching thing, but was distracted by a bead of nether that seemed to have settled on his finger. A wave of shivers ran over his body. Right. He was bleeding. Bleeding was bad. Application of nether to bleeding should solve problem number one, the bleeding. He summoned the nether to the hand not holding the torchstone and tried to shove it at the wound. It took a few tries, but eventually it got the idea and started pulling all the torn bits of Dante back together. Some amount of time later, the nether stopped stitching flesh. Dante frowned and bent over to investigate, only to find that the nether had run out of things to fix. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

\----

“Dante! Hey, Dante!” Someone seemed to be trying to get his attention. They also seemed to be hitting him in the face. Repeatedly. _That_ seemed downright unfair, seeing as he’d already been hit several times tonight. “Swear to the gods, Dante, I’m not carrying both you and your cat out of here if you don’t wake up.” Oh. Someone was probably Blays. 

Dante forced his eyes open and blinked heavily. The torchstone was still lit, resting on wet earth where it had fallen. Blays was crouched on his other side, one hand on Dante’s shoulder while the other slapped him back to consciousness. “Hey, are you awake yet?”

Dante lifted his head and leaned it back against the tree. “I think so? I’m gonna go with yes.”

Blays’s grin looked strained. “Great. Step one. Now we should probably get to step two, which if I recall correctly involves us getting the hell out of here. Can you walk?”

Dante could not, in fact, so much as stand on his own at that moment. Blays solved this problem by grabbing Dante’s arm and dragging him up anyway. A group of norren stood some distance away, eyeing the two humans in a not entirely friendly but not actively hostile manner. Blays picked up the torchstone and handed it back to Dante. They started off, heading deeper into the trees.

“How’d you even find me?” Dante asked a few minutes later.

Blays laughed once. “Well for one, it was Suri who led us this way. We got the last of the norren out and she took off. One of the norren had seen the guards run off this way too, so we figured this was the direction to go. Also your torchstone is really damn bright.” Suriyana appeared out of the darkness and sniffed at Dante’s boots.

“I guess you can stay,” he said softly. Suriyana leaped up to the top of his bag. Blays laughed and continued on into the night.


End file.
